Month: January 2015

You establish that environment … I’ve earned their trust and their carefree nature by hundreds of actions over time that took years to build, that took lots of Times coming to them or apologizing or blaming myself … I’m transparent. We both want the same things. True. But if you cannot communicate with your coach; your coach criticizes or critiques every move you make or gives you feedback Non stop when you mess up, or your coach points fingers after losing and it’s a me instead of me mentality… Don’t expect them to play with confidence when they know if They mess up they will be spotlighted. No such thing as traditional coach relationship If you are referring to one that is not like me, Either she became that player that’s confident and makes decisions because of me or because he allows her to do that. Regardless creativity love in individual commitment have to being embedded into players dna, you need it either before hand or in the present. If you don’t have creative confident passionate players you won’t win . Players that play in fear play vanilla and. Cannot handle chaos decision making. There are plenty of ways to provide this, in many different types of relationships. There’s not a way but every good player in the world plays confidently with creativity and conviction and they have a self-motivated desire to improve, They can make decisions instinctively not from cues or sideline talk 24-7. Messi isn’t good bc of one coach he had, but had his coach criticized him non stop at age 5 if he dribbled too much or when he missed a shot have him so much feedback that instead he lost the instinct and therefore eventually the enjoyment … Maybe he’s not a player period but he’s certainly not Messi. In soccer sometimes you create the environment more vs x o’s … The best drill In the world is only going to be as productive as the amount of energy and commitment you put into it. If player A goes to practice half-assed and runs through the motions and isn’t mentally engaged in all the activities 1000 practices in a row will they get more than player B who goes to 100/1000 practices and approaches them eager and pushes himself and is trying to go at it 100? I make this argument all the time, you only get better outside your comfort zone and you only can do that once you become comfortable, that sounds like a contradiction but it’s not, copyright that. But would player need the second without the first? Would player have wanted that had it not once been something that wasn’t just a game but a passion? Is passion generated from thin air? On a whim? It’s an experience, I’m the coach I am because my dad sucked the passion out of me and I hated playing it. Had he made the game mine or I was so invested that I played in college; then maybe I don’t end up being a coach at all… Or influence anyone, and player never joins LC United plays one season with Bob or hair boy and it’s average and decides she wants to be a cheerleader? It’s relevant.

This is the biggest thing that people forget in the US- Soccer is the one sport that you don’t call plays like football and set lineups and call timeouts for basketball and and bunt a runner over like in baseball, it’s totally and 100% player centered. So many parents want game to be managed/organized/broken down into segments in the same type of way that it’s done and soccer and it’s not possible. In America we have an obsession with organization, namely the biggest problem is – really if it looks like they’re having too much fun it’s not productive, you want to see your kid out there running laps and looking pissed off and miserable they aren’t “getting something out of it”… but yet you have countries like Chile and Ireland and Costa Rica that are 1/100 the size of our population with 1/1000 of the resources that still come and kick our a$$ at the national level…why do you think that is? Because they had better training centers or practices earlier and younger? No… it’s because it’s less organized, less critiqued, and they develop the right way at a younger age without all the pressure, buildup and and generic over-coaching. They don’t throw 100 things at the wall all at once and just pray it all sticks. It’s like going out to the field when I used to work @ the Y- and seeing a coach that has two hours a week to work with this team- spending 45 minutes working on throws… A skill that is totally nothing do with soccer, at least you don’t “develop you throw in” like you develop you dribbling stupid crap like that. People are cool tho with that because it totally looks like they’re getting something out of it… we can find it, track it, mark of the list, check the box and move on to the next thing, it’s measurable success… Or is it? Here success is measured in the now, the immediate, but it hinders our overall long-term development. The problem with this changing is that the ones that want to do this the correct way- they will have to suffer the setbacks and failures of that early on, they aren’t going to be the ones that get the credit later, and they have to have a player-centered invested interest, not self-centered. In this country its harder to do than anywhere else… but not impossible.